Computer technology has become ubiquitous in our society. Computers are increasingly used in the workplace, in the home and at schools. Many applications for computer technology exist which increase productivity by performing, with minimal intervention or direction, a number of repetitious mechanical tasks that are a necessary part of the more complex tasks which are performed every day in our society.
To effectively interact with a computer application using either keyboard or a graphical user interface (GUI), a user must have a good working knowledge of the natural language used in the interface of the applications. Persons who cannot read a language, either because they do not yet possess the necessary basic skills due to their age or development, or because they are not familiar with the natural language in its graphical form, are at a disadvantage using this type of a user interface.
Graphical user interfaces for some types of programs, both in commercial and educational applications, have attempted to fill this gap by providing selection based on the first letter of a word or by using a letter-based menu selection system to advance through a set of words. In response to a selected letter, these systems may display a group of words having the same first letter. An example of the former is the Index function in the Help menu of the Microsoft Excel.RTM. spreadsheet program.
While this type of interface does make these applications somewhat more accessible to individuals who are unfamiliar with the orthography of a language, it is not sufficient to allow one with some language skills but little or no orthographic knowledge to effectively use the application.